Efficiency of participation in planning

The participatory planning became recently the main pier that leads changes and development in cities. The communicative turn in spatial planning reflects the changes of local economies and society towards open, globally reaching relationships, and increasing concerns for local environments. Moreover, increasing participation is an efficient tool for avoiding social exclusion, which is often related to restructuring local economies and unemployment. At the strategic level, participation can also be understood as collaboration between economic actors, NGOs and the city, in addition to the public. This shows how the city reflects the needs of other actors in its strategy and policy making. In Egyptian communities’ cases, new innovative arenas and localized processes were set to realize the potential for urban planning, as well as for public policy processes. These innovations were necessary especially for guaranteeing the real implementation of planning outputs which cannot be realized unless the participation process was efficient. Participatory processes need resources: time, organizational efforts, communication and clear commitment. Two different participatory applications of urban development had been applied in Egyptian cities since 2002 with the help of different international agencies: (1) The first was Strategic Urban Planning (SUP) with the assistance of the Sweden international Development Agency (SIDA) technical assistance. (2) The second was The Strategic Urban Planning For The Small Cities (SUPSC), with the assistance of UN-Habitat. The two methodologies considered participation of the communities as trigger to start and to feed the planning process. Therefore, they were formulating their local planning process, activities, and trying to achieve almost the same outputs, and outcomes. A comparison between the two processes will take place in order to indentify the participation activities and their real efficiency. The comparison will be focused on the parameter of participation realized in each case in order to find gaps that have negative effects and needs to be filled.